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Markets and Marketization in Higher Education

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions

Introduction

This entry discusses:

  • The theory of markets and marketization

  • What marketization means for higher education

  • Why higher education in many countries is being marketized

  • The limits to marketization

  • The consequences of marketization

A short final section reflects on some of the issues and ironies of marketization in higher education. Readers who can bear to read more may wish to refer to Teixeira et al. 2004; Brown 2011; Regini 2011; John and Fanghangel 2016 (for marketization generally, see Crouch 2011, Chapter 2).

Markets and Marketization

In economic theory, a “market” is a means by which the demand and supply for a particular product is balanced through the price mechanism. Suppliers compete for the custom of consumers who make their choices on the basis of information about price, quality, and availability. In the language of economics, markets provide both greater “static efficiency” (the ratio of outputs to inputs at any point of time), and greater “dynamic efficiency”...

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Brown, R. (2018). Markets and Marketization in Higher Education. In: Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_97-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_97-1

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